Secrets of America's Best Sandwiches

The challenges on Man v. Food are notoriously big, but host Adam Richman has recently narrowed his focus. His new show, Adam Richman's Best Sandwich in America, premiering this Wednesday on the Travel Channel, pits some of the country's finest works between two slabs against each other. (He also happens to be traveling around the country serving his own sliders on a food truck sponsored by Jim Beam Red Stag.) So Richman stopped by the Esquire offices this week with some sandwiches and some bacon and some bourbon to share some of the things he's learned during filming. Including the virtues of grease and a Kaiser roll. —Sylvie Krekow

There's a place in Austin, Texas, called Noble Pig, and these guys all have fine-dining training, and they're so over the corporate structure and the ass-kissing, and they founded this place. They bake their own bread — the only thing they don't make is the potato chips. I had gone there to try the duck pastrami. I said, "What do you guys love?" And they said, "The seared beef tongue." I said, "Really?" But they do. They braise it for seven to nine hours, and it's extraordinary. Then they take green onions and throw them in their smoker, and smoke them at the same time as the duck and the pork belly, so they caramelize. I never thought to do smoked green onion. And I'm so jaded, I'm like, Oh, I've had that flavor, whatever. But there's nothing like it on the planet. And on home-baked bread? It's ridiculous.

When I came up with the idea, I sort of knew where I wanted to go, but there were some places that I had spent limited time in. I'm not gonna lie to you — there was pressure from the network. I really do think that, as a host, your word and your integrity — that's your commerce.

Granted, I haven't really seen my abs since about '93.

It's funny. Menu descriptions are deceiving. I tried this one sandwich — I don't want to throw the place under the bus — where I said, "Oh, this is it," and it was one of the worst sandwiches I've ever had. It literally had all the things I love: avocado, fried egg — these great, unctuous, luscious sort of ingredients. Crap-o-rama.

Of our three finalists, I don't think there are more than five ingredients in each sandwich. One sandwich has three ingredients. The meat, though, takes over a day to prepare — the brining, the seasoning, the pomp and circumstance.

The three biggest failings of the show — and I think it's a really good show, but I'll be honest — we didn't get a chance to do a breakfast sandwich. We didn't do a Banh Mi — and that might be my favorite type of sandwich. And we didn't get a tuna melt. It's not like I think these things are deal-breakers, but they're classics.

The other big bummer is that there was a place I wanted to do in the Gulf Coast, and it burned down, like, two weeks before we were going to come. It was a place called the Shed in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. It was so great. They have other locations, but it wasn't the same thing. They do a rib-tip sandwich with their homemade slaw, and it is the essence of Gulf Coast barbecue. Just sweet enough, just smoky enough, a little bit of heat.

Breakfast sandwiches are a hangover cure as much as they are a way to start the day. My director and I had this dialogue about them. We had bacon, egg, and cheese on a Kaiser roll, fries. It really came down to the choice of beverage. I said fountain Coke. He said, "No, it's gotta be a Vitamin Water." I was like, I can't even talk to you anymore.

That's the beautiful thing about growing up in New York. With the bacon, egg, and cheese, sometimes it's the greasier the grill, the shadier the place, the better, where they have the little bacon weight that looks like a trowel that they drop on the bacon like a brick, and the bacon has long since given up the ghost. It's not even American cheese — it says "cheese food" on there or something.

The sandwich porn I've accrued on this phone...

I couldn't always pick the sandwiches I wanted to, simply from a production standpoint. I found this kickass sandwich in Austin, but it was from a food cart that could fit [pointing] from the end of this table to the wall, so then I tried to imagine six of my crewmembers, two cameras, and the lighting instruments in a wood-fired truck in Austin at the end of May. Why don't I just fucking kill them?

I get offers from people to partner in restaurants, left, right, and center. I'm not gonna put my head in the guillotine quite yet because, having worked in the industry since I was thirteen, I now know that owning a restaurant is... It's worse than having a Chihuahua. Probably a metaphor that's never been made, but I mean, you gotta be on top of that thing.

At the end of the day, I found that, at its best, the sandwich is your imagination bound by two pieces of bread.

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